A Correction Function to Improve the Accuracy of Measuring Elastic Modulus by Instrumented Spherical Indentation

Instrumented indentation combined with the classic Oliver–Pharr method has been widely utilized to measure elastic modulus of various materials. However, the elastic modulus measured by instrumented spherical indentation (ISI) is not as accurate as that measured by instrumented sharp indentation, especially at large indentation depth. In this work, the effect of the maximum indentation depth on measurement of elastic modulus by ISI was deeply investigated through finite element simulations and experiments. It was found that errors in measured elastic moduli increase significantly due to the inaccurate estimation of contact radius and excessive increase in initial unloading stiffness as maximum indentation depth increases. A correction function was then proposed to correct the measured elastic modulus. After correction, the errors were effectively reduced to within ±5 % for most cases. This work contributes to discovery of the error source in the measurement of elastic modulus by ISI, thereby improving the measurement accuracy.